Zara Stone

Advertising is taken to a whole new level with these animal inspired hairstyles created by Mark Anthony Sumray. These hair designs were sculpted with the models natural hair and were created to promote Bench’s new range of hair styling products.

I’m not sure if someone looking at these intricate human hair sculptures of a gecko and a spider would immediately make one think, hey I wish I had a hairspray that wold let me recreate this, but these striking pictures do make you look, and thus achieve Bench’s first goal of gaining attention.

It’s an unusual choice of advert for Bench to run with, especially as Bench is a brand associated with fashion rather than beauty. I think Bench were probably trying to garner some new devotees with the Bench Fix line, tapping into the youth market aiming to be seen as edgy and stylish with these ads. The attention to detail is what grabs me, and I’m more intrigued in the process of creating the hairstyles than any information at all about the products.

It’s hard to decide whether I like the gecko or the spider best, but they do make me think of my all time favorite human hair artist Nagi Noda, who is well known for creating amazingly detailed hair sculptures. Her hair pieces looked like different animals- lions, tigers bears (oh my!) have taken up residence in the models hair and they’re made using real real human hair- simply wonderful to look at. Sadly Nagi Noda has passed away, but her legacy remains- captured forever in her striking images and unusual hair hats.

Check out some more of Nagi Noda’s work after the jump.

This birds nest hairpiece is fantastic- the bear reaching for the baby birds is very beautiful.

Noda’s work really appeals to me, and I like that hers wasn’t produced with a commercial intent in mind- Bench is trying to sell a product, whilst she was building a brand. Would you wear a human hair hat- or buy a product because someone else did?